You are hereMeet the Author: Dr. Norma Price, Samaritan Volunteer and Migrant Advocate

Meet the Author: Dr. Norma Price, Samaritan Volunteer and Migrant Advocate

Start: 05/11/2010 6:30 pm

End: 05/11/2010 7:30 pm

norma price Over the past ten years, more than 4,000 people have died while crossing the Arizona desert to find jobs, join families, or start new lives. Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass and bodies that are never recovered or counted.

Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants in firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails.

These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants' plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in sometimes compromising situations and at their own humanizing process.

Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings.

Norma Price has lived for over a decade in southern Arizona and has become a true denizen of the desert. Since moving to Tucson, she has embraced Southwest culture, enjoying many outdoor activities and the proximity to Mexico. Before moving to Tucson she practiced medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, for twenty-five years. Norma graduated from the University of Tennessee School of Medicine in Memphis, Tennessee, where she also completed internship and residency in internal medicine, followed by a fellowship in hematology. Subsequent oncology fellowships at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas, and Emory University Hospital and Clinic in Atlanta completed her medical training. Norma volunteers at a local medical clinic for the uninsured. She remains committed to the work of Samaritans and other humanitarian and activist groups that focus on border issues. She lives with her husband, Stan Windham, in Tucson, Arizona.